Old Zach has, quite rightly, taken all sides to task for their coverage of, and reactions to, the tawdry collapse of Eliot Spitzer. But in this piece, we get a perspective that has been lacking so far:

Eliot Spitzer is a timeless example of the basic conundrum of government: the fact that anyone who really wants to wield power is, by that very fact, the last person who should be allowed to do so. I call this the Washington Conundrum, named after George Washington—who is arguably the first man in history to demonstrate the solution: the only person who can safely be allowed to wield power is someone who seeks it out of dedication to the cause of liberty.

But take away the love of liberty—and the ideological framework of individual rights that supports it—and we return to the squalid pattern of most of human history: power not only corrupts, but attracts, rewards, and promotes the most corrupt types of human character.

Without the love of liberty and the principles of liberty, we don't get George Washingtons in public office. Instead, we get the Emperor's Club VIPs—self-aggrandizing thugs like Eliot Spitzer.

While this may be painting with a pundit-sized brush, I think the larger point is true not only for the Spitzers of this world, but for the political class as a whole.

There are those good people, of high principles and determination, who enter public life with the intention of acting on those principles and then returning home to live under the laws they made. Such individuals have always been rare, but they are virtually extinct today.

But it is often said that we get the government we deserve, populated by the people we choose to elect. The lament that there are no good alternatives at the ballot box, that we are forced to choose between the lesser of two evils, is commonplace.

However, part of the blame for this condition lies squarely on the voters' shoulders. We -- the irrational, the easily-swayed, the uninformed -- allow those who seek power for its own sake to get it...repeatedly. But rather than take steps to correct this, we choose alternatives that only make the problem worse, encouraging those who are even less informed and more easily swayed to go to the polls and fulfill their sacred duty so we can all feel good about how many people participated. We fail in our most basic function as sovereign citizens: Conducting due diligence.

This is the hard part of being a citizen. It takes energy, time, sustained effort. But without that effort, the system naturally spirals toward entropy. And the results are predictable: Those who have the desire to rise above will do so, regardless of their motives, because the rest of the system is passive, more willing to accept than to challenge. Once there, they expend their energies in perpetuating themselves in power and expanding the boundaries -- both public and personal -- of what that power can achieve.

Some, like Spitzer, get too greedy and fall. But the more careful survive. And thrive...to the self-inflicted detriment of us all.